Every year four of the world's seven species of marine turtles arrive on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica to nest. Among them is the Olive Ridley, an ancient turtle that has been around for more that 100,000,000 years and was at one time amongst the most prolific and abundant of all turtle species.

Thanks to extensive fishing and egg harvesting, the population of this ancient turtle that was once believed to be as high as ten million was decimated so badly that like other sea turtles it had to be placed on the 'endangered' list. Then about two decades ago, a rather controversial sounding plan was put in place by the conservationists at Costa Rica's Ostional National Wildlife refuge for the 8 X 200 meter wide Ostional beach where these turtles arrive by the hundreds of thousands twice a year - Once between January to April and the second time between May to December for an ancient reproductive ritual that the locals call arribadas ('arrivals' in Spanish).The earlier season is usually a shorter one, spanning less then four days with about 5,000 turtles coming ashore to lay eggs. The second, which is during the wetter months of the year, involves more then 300,000 turtles and can last anywhere between 8-10 days. Sometimes the turtles even arrive twice during the rainy season!

Not only that, the females lay not one, but clutches of 100 eggs at a time, which means that over the course of the nesting season there can be millions of eggs strewn all over the beach. While this is great news, herein lies the problem. Because the turtles all rush in droves, they tend to trample over existing nests, which not only destroy the previous eggs, but also, cause them to rot and contaminate the surrounding sand. This in turn diminishes the hatching success of the surviving eggs to just 1-2%! More....

It is one of nature’s great spectacles. On certain nights of the year, huge numbers of olive ridley sea turtles (Lepidochelys olivacea) mass in the Pacific Ocean just off the beach at Ostional, Costa Rica. Next, tens of thousands of females come clambering ashore over two or three nights to lay their eggs in the sand. These mass nesting events, called arribadas, may occur a half-dozen times over the course of a year on the beach of the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge. And each time, for the first two days, local villagers come out to harvest and sell as many eggs as they can lay their hands on. And it is entirely legal. The harvest may seem particularly shocking given that Costa Rica has carefully cultivated a reputation as a green destination. On the opposite coast, moreover, a conservationist was murdered earlier this year while trying to prevent poachers from raiding the nests of another sea turtle species. (Police recently arrested suspects, said to be known turtle egg poachers, in that killing.) But Ostional is different, and for its many supporters, it constitutes an important success for community-based conservation, which is the controversial idea that you can protect a natural resource by engaging the local population to manage and profit from it. Proponents of community-based conservation regularly do battle—one scientist calls it “a dialog of the deaf”—with old-school proponents of fencing in wildlife and fencing out locals. And the fencing crowd likes to point out that community-based programs have frequently failed.But the Ostional egg harvesting project has been operating for more 25 years now, and the turtles seem to be thriving. It started in the early 1980s, when local villagers realized that egg harvesting by their own community and neighboring villages was out of control. More....

A court sentenced a Costa Rican man to a year in jail for destroying sea turtle nests, but then reduced the sentence to three years probation.

A criminal court in Santa Cruz, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, sentenced a local man to one year in prison for destroying turtle nests, an environmental crime in Costa Rica, the National System of Conservation Areas (SINAC) reported on Thursday. SINAC did not release the man's name.However, he will serve no time in prison, as the court then reduced the sentence to three years probation. The case wrapped up two years after he was first arrested.The defendant also was ordered to pay a ₡381,930 ($764) fine plus court costs. Per his probation arrangement, the one-year jail sentenced would be added to any other sentence if the man is convicted of an additional crime in the next three years.The case dates to May 24, 2011, when park rangers of the Ostional National Wildlife Refuge found the man poaching eggs from an endangered olive ridley turtle nest (Lepidochelys olivacea).The suspect, in possession of 200 eggs, was taken to the Prosecutors’ Office in Santa Cruz, where the judicial process against him began. More....

Two decades on, an unusual project to stabilize the population of Olive Ridley sea turtles in the coastal town of Ostional on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula that led the Government to legally permit an exemption to the ban on harvesting sea turtle eggs, remains controversial. The rationale for circumventing a global conservation effort is to sustainably maintain the local population of Olive Ridley sea turtle, while concurrently providing a consistent income stream for the economically challenged local community of Ostional who may harvest the turtle eggs from the beach to sell locally. People on both sides of this contentious issue have observed that with this project the government of Costa Rica has in essence legalized poaching. Indeed, despite the vigorous defense of what is claimed to be a well-managed and officially sanctioned harvest by needy local people, critics abound. Even after twenty years, independent turtle authorities remain far from any universal agreement as to the scientific and economical basis for this project’s mission and its impact.Four of the world’s seven species of marine turtles nest on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, the Pacific Green (Chelonia Mydas) or “Negra,” Leatherback (Dermochelys Coriacea) or “Baula” or “Canal,” Hawksbill (Eretmochelys imbricata) or “Carey,” and the Olive Ridley (Lepidochelys Olivacea) or “Lora” or “Carpintera.” Olive ridleys get their name from the coloring of their heart-shaped shell, which starts out gray but becomes olive green once the turtles are adults. Forty-seven beaches on the Pacific coast have been identified as having turtle nesting activity.

The Olive Ridley turtles have been around a very long time, more than 100,000,000 years, are naturally very prolific and the most numerous of the seven existing species, with breeding beaches throughout the tropics, though it has, until recently, been considered “Endangered.” More....